John  Kelman 


The  Word  of  the  Lord 
Endureth  Forever 


[         NOV   1  '1 


V^'4.    / 


K2qwq2 


'he  Word  of  the  Lord 
Endureth  Forever 


JOHN  KELMAN 
D.D. 


:  x'',mm 


The  Word  of  the  Lor 
Endureth  Forever 


AUG    28  19 

;^fOtOGICAL  SEVI 


A  SERMON 

Delivered  in  the 

Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church 

New  York  City 

Sunday,  December  7,  1919 


/ 

By  the  Pastor,  the 

REV.  JOHN  ^KELMAN 

D.D. 


Printed  by  the  Fifth  ATeane  Pretbyterian  Chxirch 


Copyright  1920 
John  Kelman,  D.D. 


The  Word  of  the  Lord 
Endureth  Forever 

By  Rev,  John  Kelmai<(,  D.D. 


The  Word  of  the  Lord  Endureth  Forever— \  Peter  1  :  25 


YOU  have  in  your  hands  the  most  wonderful 
thing  in  all  the  world.  It  is  a  sword  for 
smiting  and  a  refuge  from  the  sword.  It  is 
the  profoundest  mystery  and  the  clearest  revelation. 
It  is  the  most  terrifying  book  in  the  world  and  also 
the  most  comforting.  It  is  the  most  human  thing 
on  earth  and  also  the  most  divine.  Some  years  ago 
Dr.  Horton  in  his  Yale  lectures  created  much  con- 
troversy by  his  insistence  upon  the  larger  significance 
of  the  phrase,  the  Word  of  God,  which  he  widened 
to  include  the  whole  revelation,  both  in  and 
out  of  the  Bible.  It  is  a  valuable  and  a  much  needed 
correction  of  a  somewhat  narrow  interpretation  of 
revelation,  and  it  is  quite  true  that,  as  the  apostle 
says,  the  Word  of  God  is  not  bound — not  even  in 
the  boards  of  a  sacred  book.  Yet,  while  the  phrase 
covers  a  far  wider  area  than  has  often  been  assigned 
to  it,  it  is  true  that  it  is  very  specially  applicable  to 
the  Bible.  There  was  a  certain  stretch  of  human 
history  in  which  revelation  was  paramount  and 
different  from  the  revelations  made  to  man  either 
before  or  after.  There  was  a  certain  nation  which 
God  specially  chose  as  the  medium  of  His  revelation 
of  Himself  to  the  world.  Many  of  the  thoughts  and 
words  of  that  revelation  were  written  down,  some 
in  history,  some  in  poetry,  some  in  other  literary 
forms.    All  that  literature,  collected  and  preserved 


for  the  use  of  future  generations  in  the  volume 
which  we  call  the  Bible,  is  so  distinctive  and  unique 
that  it  is  perfectly  legitimate  to  call  it  par  excellence 
the  Word  of  God. 

The  history  of  the  Bible  is  very  remarkable.  The 
Jews  received  it  from  generation  to  generation,  and 
after  they  had  got  the  writers  killed  and  buried  they 
systematically  began  the  idolatry  of  the  book.  They 
counted  not  its  words  only  or  its  chapters,  but  its 
very  letters,  with  a  superstitious  and  unintelligent 
reverence  which  distracted  the  attention  of  men  from 
its  real  value  and  message.  Yet  even  to  that  very 
meticulous  care  we  are  debtors.  Had  they  not  pre- 
served it  with  such  superstitious  reverence  it  might 
never  have  survived  to  reach  our  hands  and  eyes. 
The  early  Christians,  to  whom  the  Gospels  were  sent 
and  the  epistles  written,  took  them  in  their  free, 
human  way,  accepting  them  as  part  of  their  ordinary 
life.  They  read  them,  not  as  things  apart,  but  as 
letters  and  documents  from  friends,  and  so  gave 
the  whole  that  natural  treatment  and  reception  which 
brought  upon  their  lives  the  spirit  of  those  holy 
books. 

Many  of  the  early  Christian  fathers  were  mystics, 
who  saw  in  the  sacred  writings  more  than  the  unso- 
phisticated could  read  there,  and  invented  systems  of 
symbolism  which  made  of  the  plainer  statements  of 
scripture  a  kind  of  cryptogram  for  the  initiated.  In 
their  time  also  there  was  introduced  the  influence  of 
the  Greek  philosophical  spirit,  which  built  up  the 
thoughts  and  expressions  of  the  Bible  into  complex 
dogmatic,  and  credal  form. 

The  Roman  Catholic  Church  of  the  middle  ages 
showed  its  reverence  for  the  Bible  by  the  elabora- 

4 


tion  and  exquisite  beauty  of  its  illuminated  parch- 
ments; but  it  took  over  the  right  of  interpretation 
from  the  individual  to  the  Church,  and,  having  re- 
served this  right,  it  used  the  Scriptures  for  its  own 
ecclesiastical  ends. 

The  Reformation  re-opened  the  Book  for  common 
people  and  proclaimed  the  liberty  of  each  man  to 
interpret  God's  message  for  himself.  In  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries,  however,  Protestant- 
ism had  developed  a  hard  and  lifeless  orthodoxy 
which  practically,  though  not  confessedly,  re-closed 
the  book.  From  this,  individuals  with  strong  imagi- 
nation and  fervent  faith,  broke  loose  in  fantastic 
private  interpretations,  went  out  to  seek  strange 
things,  and  found  exactly  what  they  sought.  Now 
in  these  latter  days  people  are  recognizing  at  last 
that  this  is  not  a  repository  of  proof  texts,  nor  a 
hunting-ground  of  strange  prophecies,  but  a  national 
literature,  expressing  and  recording  God's  eternal 
and  growing  revelation  to  living  men. 

The  sense  of  the  value  of  the  holy  Scriptures  has 
not  only  revived,  but  it  has  spread  throughout  the 
modern  world.  Recent  voices  of  all  sorts  might  be 
quoted  bearing  proof  of  this.  The  testimonies  of 
Professor  Huxley,  Matthew  Arnold  and  Lord  Mor- 
ley  are  familiar.  M.  Renan  has  called  it  "The  great 
book  of  consolation  for  humanity."  President 
Roosevelt  has  said  of  it,  "No  thoughtful  man  can 
doubt  that  to  decrease  the  circulation  and  use  of  the 
Bible  among  the  people  would  seriously  menace  the 
highest  interests  of  civilized  humanity."  President 
Lincoln's  presidential  addresses  could  never  have 
been  written  but  for  its  inspiration.  Not  the  least 
impressive  of  the  modern  American  testimonies  to 
the  Bible  are  the  words  of  Mark  Twain  who  said. 

5 


"Who  taught  these  ancient  writers  their  simplicity 
of  language,  their  felicity  of  expression,  their  pathos, 
and  above  all  their  faculty  of  sinking  themselves 
entirely  out  of  the  sight  of  the  reader,  and  making 
the  narrative  stand  out  alone  and  seem  to  tell  itself  ?" 
In  recent  days  we  have  those  remarkable  testimonies 
of  General  Foch,  Lord  Haig,  Lord  Roberts  and 
others,  which  are  well  known  and  often  quoted. 
General  Pershing  has  said  to  his  soldiers,  "Hardship 
will  be  your  lot,  but  trust  in  God  will  give  you  com- 
fort; temptation  will  befall  you,  but  the  teachings 
of  our  Saviour  will  give  you  strength."  Admiral 
Sims  has  added  his  testimony  that  "This  Testament 
is  a  handbook  of  manhood;  it  introduces  you  to  the 
pattern  Man,  Who  shows  you  what  to  become  and 
the  way  to  become  it." 

These  are  very  remarkable  testimonies  and  they 
prove  that  the  Bible  has  power  over  time,  as  one 
has  said.  There  are,  however,  a  few  voices  on  the 
other  side.  One  prominent  leader  of  popular  thought 
has  told  us  that  he  thinks  otherwise.  He  says, 
"Floods  of  sincere  but  unmerited  adulation  have 
been  lavished  upon  the  Hebrew  Bible.  The  world 
has  many  books  of  higher  literary  value.  .  .  .  Car- 
lyle  is  more  moral  than  Jeremiah ;  Ruskin  is  superior 
to  Isaiah ;  Ingersoll,  the  atheist,  is  a  nobler  moralist 
and  a  better  man  than  Moses.  .  .  .  Sir  Thomas 
More,  Herbert  Spencer,  Thoreau,  Matthew  Arnold 
and  Emerson  are  worth  more  to  us  than  all  the 
prophets."  Who  is  this  gentleman  of  such  original 
literary  and  moral  taste?  All  his  friends  answer 
with  one  accord,  "An  honest  man."  We  do  not 
deny  it,  but  it  may  be  permitted  to  us  to  remark 
that  there  really  are  other  qualities  which  have  some 

6 


value  in  dealing  with  such  subjects  besides  honesty. 
For  my  part  I  am  a  little  tired  of  honest  men  who 
use  their  honesty  as  an  excuse  for  talking  mischiev- 
ous nonsense.  Imagine  for  a  moment  what  Thomas 
Carlyle  or  any  literary  man  of  first  rate  competence 
would  say  if  he  were  to  read  such  an  account  of 
himself,  and  to  find  himself  pilloried  in  any  such 
comparison.  Our  author  has  quoted  Ruskin  as 
superior  to  Isaiah.  Set  against  that  extraordinary 
quotation  this  from  Ruskin's  own  pen :  '1  opened 
my  Bible  just  now,  yellow  now  with  age,  and  flex- 
ible, but  not  unclean,  with  much  use.  .  .  .  My 
mother's  list  of  chapters,  with  which,  learnt  every 
syllable  accurately,  she  established  my  soul  in  life, 
has  just  fallen  out  of  it.  .  .  .  This  material  in- 
stillation of  my  mind  in  that  property  of  chapters 
I  count,  very  confidently,  the  most  precious,  and, 
on  the  whole,  the  one  essential  part  of  my  education." 

The  Bible  has  been  translated  into  436  languages. 
It  holds  its  sway  from  Norway  to  Madagascar,  and 
literally  from  China  to  Peru.  In  Hankow  during 
one  year  the  printing-press  published  1,500,000  of 
it.  For  the  past  hundred  years  in  every  land  its 
sales  have  been  steadily  growing.  In  one  year  re- 
cently the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  alone 
published  portions  of  Scripture  at  the  rate  of  one 
for  every  five  seconds,  day  and  night;  and  in  the 
100  years  of  its  existence  it  has  sent  out  over 
200,000,000  of  copies.  The  New  York  Bible  Society, 
which  is  today  celebrating  Bible  Sunday  in  so  many 
pulpits  of  our  city,  has  had  a  long  and  distinguished 
career.  Its  yearly  distribution  numbers  practically 
500,000  volumes  in  fifty-three  languages.  It  puts 
these  into  the  hands  of  sailors  on  ships  in  the  harbor, 

7 


and  immigrants  on  Ellis  Island,  and  soldiers  in  the 
Army,  and  sailors  in  the  Navy.  It  has  done  much 
work  among  the  blind  by  means  of  Scriptures  pub- 
lished in  their  type.  It  distributes  the  Bible  free  to 
those  who  cannot  afford  to  buy  it,  but  it  has  pro- 
ceeded upon  the  wise  principle  that  its  output  is 
always  measured  by  its  income,  and  it  never  goes 
into  debt. 

Let  us  think  once  more  what  this  wonderful  book 
has  survived.  The  flying  sketch  of  its  history  given 
a  few  pages  earlier  must  have  suggested  this  to 
readers,  but  it  is  worth  our  while  to  remember  in 
detail  the  extraordinary  career  of  this  book. 

First,  it  has  survived  persecution  both  from  pagans 
and  Mohammedans,  which  has  only  endeared  it  to 
those  who  have  suffered  for  it,  and  to  those  who 
have  received  it  stained  by  the  blood  of  others  who 
died  in  its  defence.  It  has  been  subjected  to  ridicule 
from  the  days  of  Celsus  on  through  those  of  Voltaire 
to  the  diminishing  stream  of  such  pleasantries  which 
still  trickles  in  outlandish  places.  Men  have  laughed 
at  the  book  for  nineteen  hundred  years,  and  when 
their  laughter  proved  unavailing,  now  and  again 
they  have  turned  spiteful.  But  the  Bible  has  gone 
serenely  on,  unaware  of  all  that  laughter,  like  the 
Master  Himself  Who,  passing  through  the  midst  of 
them,  went  His  way. 

Again,  the  Bible  has  suffered  from  much  misin- 
terpretation. The  subtleties  of  allegorizing  have  in 
each  age  tended  to  withdraw  it  from  the  under- 
standing of  the  plain,  average  man,  insisting  that  the 
sentences  of  the  Scripture  meant  not  what  they  said 
but  something  else,  which  could  only  be  explained 
by  those  who  had  the  clue.     Not  less  hostile  to  its 

8 


real  effect  have  been  the  subtleties  of  theologians 
who  have  turned  the  warm-blooded  records  of 
experience  into  the  statements  of  a  cold  metaphysic. 
Such  influences  as  these  would  long  ago  have  sent 
any  other  book  to  the  dustiest  shelves  of  old  libraries. 
But  the  plain  man  still  possesses  this  book  and  under- 
stands it  quite  well.  He  shakes  his  head  over  high- 
sounding  theories  about  it  and  says  he  leaves  all  that 
kind  of  thing  to  scholars.  But  when  the  evening 
falls  and  the  lamps  are  lighted,  he  puts  on  his 
spectacles  and  reads  his  Bible. 

In  the  third  place  the  Bible  has  suffered  from 
the  false  protection  of  the  Church.  The  Roman 
Catholic  has  claimed  the  exclusive  right  of  interpre- 
tation, and  has  withdrawn  it  from  the  average  man, 
except  as  the  Church  chose  to  interpret  it.  The 
underlying  principle  of  this  policy  is  that  the  reader 
must  accept  the  Bible  because  the  Church  tells  him 
to  do  so,  while  the  sounder  principle  of  Protestant- 
ism is  that  we  accept  the  Church  in  so  far  as  the 
Bible  and  our  own  experience  tell  us  to  accept  it. 
To  accept  the  Bible  upon  the  authority  of  the  Church 
is  about  as  intelligent  a  principle  as  that  which  is 
said  to  have  convinced  some  savage  tribes  who  con- 
fessed their  belief  in  the  truth  of  the  Bible  after 
they  had  seen  magic  lantern  slides  depicting  its 
scenes.  Our  contention  is  that  the  Bible  finds  con- 
firmation in  the  spiritual  experience  of  men  of  all 
generations,  and  so  confirms  its  claim  to  be  the 
authentic  Word  of  God  to  man. 

Once  more  the  Bible  has  suffered  from  the  false 
claims  put  forth  on  behalf  of  it  by  its  friends.  In  a 
mistaken  attempt  to  emphasize  its  sacredness,  many 
good  people  have  reduced  it  to  a  mere  collection  of 

9 


individual  and  independent  texts  which  have  pro- 
duced a  dead  book,  inconsistent  with  itself  and  pre- 
senting no  intelligible  unity  of  thought  or  progress 
of  revelation.  Instead  of  that  we  hold  that  the  Bible 
is  the  living  revelation  of  God's  word  at  work  upon 
a  nation's  soul,  presented  to  us  at  the  various  stages 
of  that  nation's  development,  and  culminating  in  the 
perfect  vision  of  the  word  made  flesh  in  Jesus  Christ, 
the  Son  of  God. 

Any  of  these  mistaken  methods  would  have  been 
enough  to  ruin  the  influence  of  any  other  book.  It 
would  seem  as  if  its  friends  and  its  foes  alike  had 
been  working  for  its  destruction.  There  has  been  no 
other  book  which  has  been  so  unintelligently  dealt 
with  and  none  which  has  been  so  variously  inter- 
preted. The  open  knife  of  Jehudi  has  been  always 
hacking  at  it ;  the  Bible  has  been  burning  in  every  age, 
and  yet  it  is  not  consumed.  This  is  a  stupendous  fact 
in  literature.  It  is  an  absolutely  unique  phenomenon 
in  the  history  of  books.  In  view  of  this  the  question 
inevitably  arises,  Why  has  this  book  survived? 
What  is  the  secret  of  its  vitality?  And  the  answer 
is,  that  each  generation  finds  it  equally  quick  and 
powerful.  In  the  great  story  of  Nansen's  Farthest 
North  one  of  the  dreariest  and  most  pathetic  touches 
is  that  which  records  that  in  the  two  years  when 
Nansen  and  Johansen  travelled  together  through  the 
long  nights  and  days  of  the  Arctic,  their  only  litera- 
ture was  the  Nautical  Almanac.  Contrast  that  with 
such  stories — and  they  were  very  frequent — as  that 
of  the  soldier  in  the  recent  war  who  discovered  for 
the  first  time  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  John,  and 
was  found  reading  it  over  and  over  again  as  the  most 
amazing  piece  of  writing  he  had  ever  seen. 

10 


What  then  is  the  secret  of  this  book's  marvelous 
power  ? 

1.  Men  find  themselves  in  it.  The  search  for 
oneself  is  old  as  humanity,  and  there  is  nothing  in 
ancient  Greece  so  characteristic  as  the  answer  of  the 
oracle  of  Apollo,  Know  thyself.  It  was  a  great 
oracle  but  it  was  no  guide;  and  men  going  down 
from  Delphi  with  these  words  in  their  ears  were 
bewildered  rather  than  instructed.  But  in  the  Bible 
is  found  a  guide  to  self-knowledge  as  well  as  a  de- 
mand for  it.  It  reveals  to  men  both  their  actual 
and  their  ideal  selves,  their  sins  and  their  possibili- 
ties, their  conscience  and  their  hope.  Thus  it  has 
educated  the  world,  not  by  any  one  set  of  texts  so 
much  as  by  the  general  effect  which  its  perusal  has 
had  upon  the  generations.  It  has  given  to  man  a 
fuller,  saner  and  more  accurate  account  of  himself 
than  all  other  literature  has  given.  When  they  read 
the  works  of  Browning  or  Tennyson  or  any  other 
of  the  great  secular  writers,  certain  men  find  them- 
selves, when  they  are  in  certain  moods;  but  in  the 
Bible  all  men  may  find  themselves,  whatever  mood 
they  may  be  in.  It  is  this  self-discovery,  reaching 
down  to  the  depths  of  conscience  and  up  to  the 
heights  of  aspiration,  which  is  the  first  great  service 
which  the  Bible  has  done  for  humanity. 

2.  Men  find  their  fellowmen  in  the  Bible.  In 
our  estimate  of  our  fellows  we  are  like  blind  people 
groping  in  a  world  of  misunderstandings.  Now  and 
again  a  finger-tip  strays  upon  a  face,  or  a  hand 
touches  a  hand  in  the  dark.  But  it  must  be  con- 
fessed that  we  have  little  real  understanding  of  each 
other  apart  from  some  authentic  guide.  The 
literature  of  all  nations  has  earnestly  tried  to  reveal 
to  us  our  unknown  neighbors  and  make  us  familiar 

11 


with  our  fellowmen.  Yet  we  have  never  quite  found 
them,  and  to  a  large  extent  we  continue  to  Hve  alone, 
whether  in  gaiety  or  in  austerity,  while  the  proces- 
sion of  other  mortals  passes  by.  Still  more  is  this 
the  case  with  regard  to  those  whom  we  think  of  as 
hostile  to  us  or  as  strangers.  Very  few  people  even 
try  to  understand  the  point  of  view  of  such  outsiders 
with  any  seriousness  or  thoroughness.  They  are  sim- 
ply left  alone,  catalogued  as  enemies  or  as  aliens, 
hated,  or  maligned,  or  feared,  but  never  understood. 
Still  more  isolated  are  the  dead.  They  have  passed 
from  us  out  into  the  darkness,  and  the  heart  of  many 
a  mourner  knows  how  sadly  they  are  cut  off  from  the 
land  and  the  converse  of  the  living,  in  that  strange 
world  of  being  or  of  nothingness  into  which  no  safe 
pathway  leads. 

Into  all  this  world  of  isolation  the  Bible  has  en- 
tered. It  brings  with  it  a  new  world  of  human  fel- 
lowship and  understanding.  It  tells  us  how  we  may 
consider  our  neighbor  in  the  sense  of  trying  to  get 
at  his  point  of  view,  to  put  ourselves  in  his  place 
and  imagine  how  we  should  feel  and  think  about 
things  if  we  were  he.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
while  each  of  us  must  necessarily  abide  in  the  soli- 
tude of  our  own  personality  to  a  great  extent,  yet 
the  Bible  has  revealed  us  to  each  other  as  far  as  it  is 
possible  for  any  soul  thus  to  be  revealed.  As  to  the 
aliens  and  the  enemies,  the  Bible  has  convinced  us 
that  they  too  are  human  creatures  and  must  be  re- 
garded as  such.  They  may  have  to  be  vanquished, 
but  they  may  also  be  won.  They  have  human  hearts 
and  consciences,  human  experience  and  destiny,  just 
as  we  have,  and  until  we  have  sought  and  found  them, 
under  the  guidance  of  Jesus  Christ,  we  have  not  ful- 
filled the  true  law  of  life. 

12 


As  to  the  dead,  an  instance  in  the  career  of  Dr. 
Egerton  Young  seems  to  express  all  that  needs  to  be 
said.  He  was  visiting  a  tribe  of  Eskimo  Indians 
among  whom  there  had  been  of  late  a  plague  which 
slew  great  numbers  of  their  children.  The  tribe  sat 
around  him  as  he  talked  to  them  about  the  gospel, 
with  stolid  indifference,  and  frowning  faces.  His 
Bible  again  came  to  the  rescue,  and  a  sudden  in- 
spiration led  him  to  spring  up  and  shout  aloud  to 
them,  /  know  where  your  dead  children  are!  From 
that  moment  he  had  them  in  his  hand. 

3.  Men  find  their  God  in  it.  There  is  a  charac- 
teristic story  of  the  War  which  tells  how  one  man 
in  the  Highland  Light  Infantry  was  shot  in  the 
battle  of  the  Aisne,  but  the  bullet  struck  a  Bible 
which  he  carried  in  his  breast  pocket  and  penetrated 
a  certain  distance  through  the  pages.  When  he 
opened  it  he  found  that  the  text  at  which  its  impact 
had  stopped  was,  Ye  call  me  Master  and  Lord,  and 
ye  say  well  for  so  I  am.  We  are  all  of  us  aware,  not 
only  of  our  solitariness  among  other  mortals,  but  of 
the  awful  solitude  which  surrounds  us  in  this  most 
mysterious  universe.  The  vast  empty  spaces  through 
which  we  move  with  our  wheeling  earth  strike  the 
imaginative  spirit  with  a  sense  of  loneliness  that 
might  almost  bring  madness,  were  it  not  that  we  are 
all  aware  of  something  which  seems  like  a  spiritual 
presence,  hidden  indeed  and  yet  mysteriously  at 
work,  around  us.  This  presence  is  suggested  in  na- 
ture. It  is  felt  in  all  high  and  serious  art.  It 
explains  the  true  meaning  of  the  sense  of  high  com- 
radeship felt  by  the  scientific  man  when  he  discovers 
new  wonders  in  the  make  of  things.  Great  and 
tragic  instances,  such  as  the  recent  war,  seem  to  con- 

13 


vince  large  masses  of  men  of  its  reality  and  power. 
Yet  in  all  these  ways  it  is  an  indefinable  and  in- 
definite thing,  a  conviction  that  never  focuses  itself 
into  clear  and  sharp-edged  experience.  Now,  the 
wonder  of  the  Bible  is  that  it  focuses  this  vague 
sense  of  God  until  a  living  face  looks  out  at  us  from 
every  page  of  the  book.  To  study  the  Bible  is  not 
to  read  a  book ;  it  is  to  be  arrested  by  a  personality. 
We  do  not  believe  in  God  because  the  Bible  tells  us 
that  He  is  there;  we  believe  the  Bible  because  in  its 
pages  we  find  Him  unmistakable  and  clear.  For  we 
know  the  voice  of  God  when  we  hear  it.  There  is 
something  in  human  nature  that  responds  to  His 
appeal.  No  part  of  life  is  intelligible  until  it 
has  found  its  counterpart  in  the  divine,  and  this  is 
precisely  what  the  Bible  does  for  man.  Luther  in- 
sists upon  this  and  repeats  it  and  re-repeats  it  in  his 
own  fashion :  Thou  must  thyself  decide,  thy  neck 
is  at  stake y  thy  life  is  at  stake.  .  .  .  Thou  must 
boldly  and  definitely  say,  That  is  God's  Word  and 
on  that  will  I  risk  body  and  life.  That  is  what  is 
meant  by  that  grand  old  phrase,  The  Word  of  God 
comes  home  to  me.  It  is  a  case  in  which  deep 
answers  unto  deep,  in  which  the  soul  recognizes  the 
meaning  of  its  own  experience,  and  that  which  has 
been  a  vague  and  half-conscious  sense  of  indefinable 
presence  changes  to  the  glow  of  recognition  and  the 
thrill  of  love. 

Any  part  of  the  revelation  recorded  in  the  Bible 
is  in  its  measure  capable  of  doing  this,  and  actually 
did  it  to  the  people  of  the  time  when  it  appeared.  But 
most  especially,  and  for  all  time,  this  has  happened 
in  the  revelation  of  Jesus  Christ.  In  the  Bible  He 
appears  as  the  revealer  of  God  and  the  interpreter  of 
human  life.     The  person  of  Christ  has  often  been 

14 


discussed,  but  one  cannot  help  feeling  that  the  main 
thing  needed  is  that  the  Bible,  which  describes  Him, 
should  be  read  so  that  men  may  find  out  what  He 
actually  is  reported  to  have  said  and  done,  and  the 
impression  which  He  made  upon  those  who  stood 
nearest  to  Him  and  understood  Him  best.  But  for 
the  Bible  Jesus  Christ  would  now  be  a  mere  name 
which  signified  practically  nothing.  Through  the 
Bible  He  is  today,  to  a  far  wider  circle  than  ever 
in  the  past,  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation. 

What  then  is  the  relation  of  all  this  to  ourselves 
and  our  own  lives?  We  have  all  heard  stories  of 
people  who  have  paid  enormous  sums  of  money  for 
rare  editions  of  the  scriptures  whose  fictitious  value 
depended  upon  some  printer's  error  or  some  odd  ex- 
pression. Such  collectors  are  not  necessarily  careful 
readers  of  the  book,  and  are  reputed  sometimes  to  be 
so  proud  of  their  possession,  and  so  afraid  of  losing 
it,  as  to  lock  it  away  in  some  strong  safe.  Like  them 
we  too  have  paid  a  dear  price  for  our  Bible,  or  our 
ancestors  have  paid  it, — a  dear  price,  not  in  money 
only,  but  in  blood  and  tears.  Have  we  paid  that 
price  only  to  boast  of  it  is  a  possession  and  to  lock 
it  away  in  places  where  it  is  never  read?  And,  if 
that  is  all,  has  the  historic  price  of  the  holy  scrip- 
tures been  worth  while?  If  we  lock  the  scriptures 
away  in  the  safe  of  our  praise,  our  approval,  our 
admiration,  we  may  get  them  out  of  our  way  just  as 
securely  as  if  we  had  them  in  the  deepest  of  safety 
vaults.  A  famous  young  blood  in  Oxford  is  reported 
to  have  boasted  to  one  of  his  professors  of  the  enor- 
mous number  of  his  books  and  to  have  asked  the  pro- 
fessor what  he  would  advise  him  to  do  with  them,  to 
which  the  laconic  reply  was,  "I  would  advise  you  to 
read  them."     So  our  first  duty  and  wisdom  is  to 

15 


read  the  Bible — to  read  it  not  as  a  compliment  to 
its  author,  but  for  our  own  souls'  sake;  to  read  it  in 
order  that  we  may  be  educated  men  and  women — in 
order  that  we  may  discover  ourselves,  and  one 
another,  and  our  God ;  to  read  it,  not  as  a  last  resort 
when  we  have  nothing  else  to  read,  but  as  the  exer- 
cise upon  which  our  highest  interests  depend,  as  the 
experiment  on  whose  issue  all  that  makes  life  per- 
manently worthy  and  blessed  hangs.  Having  read 
the  Bible,  it  is  our  business  first  to  see  that  we 
understand  it,  not  in  any  recondite,  or  conventional, 
or  traditional  sense,  but  in  a  frank,  human  under- 
standing of  words  that  were  obviously  meant  to  be 
understood.  Next  it  is  our  duty  to  obey  it  and  then 
to  send  it  on.  That  is  the  object  and  justification 
for  all  Bible  Societies.  They  are  not  repositories 
and  distributors  of  so  much  paper  and  printer's  ink. 
They  are  guardians  and  heralds  of  a  vital  spirit, 
which,  coming  out  upon  the  world  from  God,  re- 
deems the  world  through  all  its  generations. 

Yes,  and  the  question  changes.  We  have  been 
discussing  what  we  are  to  do  with  the  Bible.  It 
will  be  well  for  us  if  we  remember  that  there  is 
another  question,  namely.  What  is  the  Bible  going  to 
do  with  us  ?  Christ  said  long  ago,  The  word  that  I 
have  spoken  unto  you,  the  same  shall  judge  you.  It 
is  true  that  the  word  of  Christ  is  not  only  a  strict 
but  also  a  merciful  judge.  Yet  every  Bible,  shut  or 
open,  neglected  or  studied,  is  a  judgment-seat  for 
men ;  and  it  will  be  well  for  us  indeed  if  our  treat- 
ment of  this  book,  both  in  respect  of  our  private 
use  of  it  and  our  distribution  of  it  to  others,  may 
stand  unashamed  before  the  judgment-seat  of  Christ. 


16 


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